For winter sports fans, Grenoble is known as the capital of the 1968 Olympics. Admirers of Stendhal know that the author of Red and Black was born in this French city. Nuclear physicists and specialists in the field of molecular biology often attend scientific symposia at the Grenoble research institutes.
And ordinary tourists, who have something to see in Grenoble, turn up here because of the most interesting museum exhibitions and picturesque mountain landscapes, which are abundantly opened from the panoramic windows of the cabins of one of the world's oldest funiculars.
By the way, the inhabitants of Grenoble call their city the capital of the Alps and the actual state of affairs on the administrative map of the country does not bother them too much.
Top 10 attractions in Grenoble
Bastille
The Bastille fortress, which rises on a hill above Grenoble, is its main architectural and historical landmark. More than 600 thousand people visit it annually, inspired by the history of the citadel's appearance and wanting to get acquainted with the peculiarities of the fortification architecture of the late 15th - early 17th centuries.
The idea of building the bastion belonged to Lesdiguere, who was at the head of the Huguenot army, which captured Grenoble in 1590. The new governor ordered the construction of strong defensive structures so as not to tempt a potential enemy. Before the start of work, the builders demolished the remains of the Roman fortifications and the walls that had stood on the hill since the 13th century. Subsequently, the fortification systems of the Bastille of Grenoble were reconstructed and re-equipped more than once. As a result, the structures and structures of the fortress, dating from different eras, appear before today's visitors.
The peculiarity of the Bastille in Grenoble is that the fortress was not intended for conducting artillery fire at the points located below. The purpose of its construction was to defend against those who could attack from the mountains. The citadel is surrounded by rather low walls in terms of the fortification standards of the time, but it has a system of underground fortifications. The caves could house ammunition and food depots, and their technical characteristics made it possible to create a line of fire in the rear of the advancing enemy.
Cable car Grenoble - Bastille
If you want to view Grenoble from above, the best option is to buy a ticket for the funicular to the top of the hill from the old town center. The cable car is no less an attraction in Grenoble than the Bastille. It was opened in 1934 and became one of the first in the world to operate all year round.
- Every year the Grenoble funicular “winds” about 4,000 working hours, while the usual “cable cars” - three to four times less.
- The maximum speed at which the road transports passengers is 5.8 m / s, the whole journey in one direction takes about 3.5 minutes. The horizontal distance covered by each cabin is about 700 m, and the vertical distance is more than 260 m.
- Almost three hundred thousand passengers are transported during the year by the most famous vehicle of Grenoble. In total, approximately 12 million people have used it since the opening of the funicular.
- The spherical cabins that the funicular is equipped with today were designed and installed in 1976. They are called bubbles for their characteristic puffy appearance. Before the cabins were blue houses, then they were repainted in red and yellow - the colors of the city. In winter, four cabins are used on the cable car, and a fifth is added in summer. Each can accommodate six passengers.
- Behind the upper station of the funicular is the Terrace of Geologists, on which there are memorial signs of the most famous explorers of the Alpine mountain system. The terrace offers magnificent views of Grenoble and the surrounding landscapes.
Less Bulles ("Bubbles"), as the Grenoblers affectionately call their funicular, operates from 9 am to midnight without breaks and weekends.
Museum of the Dauphinua Region
One of the most popular Grenoble museums was founded over a hundred years ago by ethnographer Hippolyte Müller. The first visitors got acquainted with the exposition in the Monastery of Sainte-Marie-d'en-Bas, where it was located until 1968. The collection of the museum includes more than 90 thousand items, but only a small part of it is available to visitors. Scientists regularly replenish museum stocks through donations and new archaeological research.
The exposition includes historical rarities dating from a huge time period. The halls of the museum display the tools of labor of ancient people and medieval jewelry, coins from different eras and original photographs depicting the most important events of urban life in the 19th-20th centuries.
Municipal Museum of Fine Arts
The city art museum claims to be the oldest in France among its kind. It was founded in 1798 and opened to the public at the turn of the century in 1800.
The original collection consisted of about 300 works - paintings and sketches, prints and drawings, sculptural portraits and statues. Each of the four halls, where the exhibition was originally housed, had its own name and theme. In the Apollo Hall, works by French painters were exhibited, in the Hall of Castor and Pollux, the French and Italians, in the Gladiator Salon, visitors got acquainted with landscapes and genre scenes written by the "French Raphael" Estache Lesueur, and, finally, in the Hall of Venus Medici, works of Flemish art were demonstrated schools.
A new building for the museum was built in 1994. It is an example of the modern urban architectural style. There is a park to the northwest of the museum, where sculptures are exhibited.
The most interesting exhibits of the Grenoble Museum of Fine Arts:
- the fifth largest collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in France;
- a triptych by Taddeo di Bartolo, dating from the late 14th century;
- "Pope Gregory surrounded by the saints" by Rubens;
- portrait of Madeleine Bernard Paul Gauguin;
- Lake in Scotland after the storm by Gustave Dore.
Contemporary art is represented by works by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Leger, Kandinsky and Warhol.
Grenoble Cathedral
If you are interested in architectural monuments of the Middle Ages, in Grenoble you can look at the cathedral - a vivid example of Gothic architecture.
Founded in 902, Notre-Dame de Grenoble was extensively rebuilt in the 13th century, and two hundred years later it received several valuable objects of applied religious art. Among them is the monstrance, or Siborium.
In the 19th century, the church was reconstructed again: the project was developed and implemented by the architect Alfred Berruyer, who worked in the diocese of Grenoble. It was he who came up with the idea of covering the original facade with concrete cladding. However, the residents of the city did not understand and did not accept the innovation and in 1990 the concrete was removed. Now the Cathedral of Grenoble appears before tourists in its original form.
Gallo roman wall
The oldest attraction in Grenoble dates back to the end of the 3rd century AD - the remains of a fortification built during the time of the emperors Diocletian and Maximian can be seen in the old center. The wall served to protect the Roman settlement and at the same time served as a symbol of the status and legitimacy of the empire's civil community, called the civitas.
The fortification stretched for 1150 meters and was a wall of four meters thick and nine meters high, made of limestone blocks. Almost four dozen semicircular stone towers were inscribed in the fortification, each about seven meters in diameter. The ancient ruins are located next to the Grenoble Cathedral.
Chapel of the monastery of St. Mary
The Sainte-Marie-d'en-Bas cloister was founded in 1610, and was originally located in the home of the missionaries. Later, the monastery was moved to a complex of buildings specially built for it, one of which is of undoubted interest for lovers of Baroque architecture.
The Chapel of the Visitation is a prime example of the French Baroque style. Her altar is carved out of wood and covered with gilding. The walls of the chapel were painted by Toussaint Massot in 1622. The themes of the frescoes are scenes from the life of St. Francis of Sale, who was one of the founders of the monastery of St. Mary in Grenoble.
Archaeological Museum
The city's collection of archaeological rarities is housed in a room under a Benedictine church dating from the 12th century. In 1803, the remains of a Roman building were discovered in its basements, which served as the foundation for the architect who erected the medieval temple.
Today the ancient ruins are accessible for inspection. They are an archaeological site that presents to visitors the surviving remains of buildings dating back to the 3rd century AD.
Palace of Parliament Dauphiné
Until 1790, the province of Dauphiné existed in France, and Grenoble was its administrative center. The Dauphiné parliament was housed in a palace that appeared in the city at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. It was built on St. Andrew's Square near the Cathedral. The facade of the former parliament, despite the restructuring and reconstruction, has retained the features of the mature Gothic, although the signs of the Renaissance style in the building are easily guessed. Later, the Dauphiné Palace of Parliament served as the seat of the Grenoble Court until 2002.
Lyceum of Stendhal
The oldest educational institution in Grenoble bears the name of one of the most famous natives of the city - the writer Marie-Henri Beyle, known to readers under the pseudonym Stendhal.
Initially, the educational institution was founded as a Jesuit college. This happened in 1651. An astronomical clock has been preserved in the main building of the college from the 17th century. Their mechanism was constructed in 1637 and still works flawlessly.
